Miranda Devine: The Concerted Cover-Up of Biden Family Scandals—From the Laptop to China

EPOCHTV
Mar 13, 2023
26 min read

“There are a lot of secrets that a lot of powerful people don’t want told about exactly how our story was suppressed—how Joe Biden was protected from that information before the election…it’s very high stakes.”

Today I sit down with New York Post journalist Miranda Devine, author of the 2021 book, “Laptop from Hell: Hunter Biden, Big Tech, and the Dirty Secrets the President Tried to Hide.”

Devine and I explore what we’ve learned since the New York Post first broke the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop in October of 2020.

“I think the Biden family is a sort of model for how China plays the long game to infiltrate into the highest reaches of American power elites,” says Devine. “And Joe Biden was targeted very early on.”

Interview trailer:

Watch the full interview: https://www.theepochtimes.com/miranda-devine-the-concerted-cover-up-of-biden-family-scandals-from-the-laptop-to-china_4912212.html

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek:

Miranda Devine, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Miranda Devine:

Thanks for having me, Jan.

Mr. Jekielek:

It’s a very interesting time for you, I’m sure, and certainly for me. Elon Musk has said he’s going to release the Twitter censorship files. We’ll find out what’s in there sometime soon, maybe even today as we’re recording. At the same time, Yoel Roth is on record having said that, “Censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story,” which you’ve written about extensively back in October of 2020, “was a mistake.” And he’s even said that the FBI visited Twitter much as they visited Facebook, as Mark Zuckerberg has said. What’s your reaction to all this?

Ms. Devine:

I would guess the chickens are coming home to roost. Finally, people are starting to understand that the censorship operation around the New York Post’s revelations to do with Joe Biden and Hunter Biden’s laptop was so egregious, that it really amounted to interference in the 2020 election. There are a lot of secrets that a lot of powerful people don’t want told about exactly how our story was suppressed, and how Joe Biden was protected from that information before the election.

There are very high stakes for Elon Musk to say that he’s going to reveal all the details of the deliberation around that censorship operation. And in fact, he’s gone further and said he’s going to reveal the whole massive censorship operation that Twitter was running against all sorts of dissenting voices, whether it be on the botched Afghanistan withdrawal, or around COVID-19 vaccines and lockdowns.

There was a lot of information that Big Tech was suppressing on behalf of the federal government. And we know in particular, with this story, with the Hunter Biden laptop story, that the FBI was involved. We know that from FBI whistleblowers, who have said that that there was suppression of detrimental information to Joe Biden within the agency, and we know that the FBI had the laptop from 2019 on.

We also know that one of Hunter Biden’s former business partners, a guy named Tony Bobulinski, went to the FBI before the 2020 election, handed over three of his devices, and gave them a long five-hour interview about what he knew about Joe Biden’s involvement in his son Hunter’s overseas business deals. None of that saw the light of day. Tony Bobulinski was never called to testify at the grand jury in Delaware that was looking into Hunter’s business dealings, and the FBI never followed up with him.

FBI whistleblowers have told us that was deliberate, and that it was a deliberate strategy to bury that information. We also know, and this is quite a sinister development that we’ve only discovered in the last few months, that the FBI went to Twitter and Facebook and warned them about what they said would be a dump of Russian misinformation or disinformation before the 2020 election. Now, our story came out three weeks before that election.

Obviously, whatever the FBI had warned Twitter and Facebook about was so similar to our story that they censored it within hours of publication. In fact, Twitter locked the New York Post account for two weeks up until just before the election. And then another sinister twist, which we’ve only just found out, is that the FBI had been spying on Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s then personal attorney, for two years, starting a month after he took that job as Trump’s attorney.

They had this covert surveillance warrant on Rudy Giuliani’s cloud during the period when John Paul Mac Isaac, who was the laptop repair shop guy from Delaware, had the laptop. The FBI would’ve seen the email that he sent to Rudy Giuliani saying, “Look, I’m worried about this. I’ve tried to get the FBI to look at it. This is what’s in it. It’s very frightening.

It’s dangerous for our national security, can you tell President Trump?” They would’ve seen all of that. They also would’ve been able to see my text messages with Rudy Giuliani, so they would’ve known or had access to that information telling them when the New York Post was going to publish.

Mr. Jekielek:

Absolutely fascinating and completely disturbing. What I’m thinking right now is, let’s go back in time. Let’s go back to those days in early October, 2020. What was it like when that story hit, and you realized that something wasn’t going as planned? Please tell me about that.

Ms. Devine:

We knew this was a big story, and it was a big courageous move by the New York Post editors to publish it, because it was so close to the election. It was going to have an impact, and it was detrimental to one of the two candidates for president. So, very high stakes. We expected that there would be pushback because of that. What we didn’t expect was that Big Tech would weigh in, would unsheathe its claws, show the world its power, and step in and censor the oldest newspaper in the country, the fourth largest by circulation.

And not only do that, but be supported by the rest of the media. And then, shortly after the censorship happened, four days after our story was published, there was an open letter published by 51 former intelligence officials, high ranking people, four or five directors of the CIA or acting directors of the CIA, people like Leon Panetta, Michael Hayden, John Brennan, and James Clapper.

These were people who had had very high ranking jobs and they were putting the authority of their former office into a letter that lied about our story, and said that our story had all the earmarks of what they said was a Russian information operation. And those were weasel words—what the world heard was that this was a Russian disinformation operation.

And of course, that just justified the Big Tech censorship and justified the rest of the media not touching the story. Joe Biden used that letter and that lie about Russian disinformation in his last debate against Donald Trump. He said, “This is garbage. This is just a Russian plant.” It worked for him, and it got Joe Biden off the hook.

Mr. Jekielek:

When did you first realize that this censorship was happening, and what was happening in the newsroom?

Ms. Devine:

Within hours of the story going live, we had kept the story until 6:00 AM, and I think by 11:00 AM, Facebook announced, on Twitter actually, that they were basically throttling the story, pending fact-checking. And by the way, that fact-checking never happened as far as we can ascertain. Because the most obvious way you would do it is you would contact the other recipients of the emails that we were publishing and ask them, “Did you get this email?” And I know, having talked to recipients, that none of them got any question or phone call from Facebook.

That basic fact-checking was never done, and we’re talking about almost two years later or more than two years later. And then, Twitter followed suit immediately. It was more chagrin and shock that this was happening, and that people were accepting it, and that there was just silence in the face of really egregious censorship. But also, we were busy publishing more stories that were coming out of the laptop. It was a very frenetic time in politics right before the election.

Mr. Jekielek:

The New York Post Twitter account was basically halted, so to speak, from publishing.

Ms. Devine:

Yes, for two weeks.

Mr. Jekielek:

So, what was the impact of that?

Ms. Devine:

Financially, it had a big impact. Those platforms are very big dissemination avenues for newspapers and media outlets. Kayleigh McEnany, for instance, who was then President Trump’s press secretary tried to share our story on Twitter, and she was locked out of her account and suspended for that. So, they were really serious about stopping that story being published. And of course, then we couldn’t disseminate any of our other stories. It was a financial penalty, as well as a slap in the face and a frightening overreach.

Remember that just shortly after that, these social media platforms also deplatformed the sitting president of the United States, and that had reverberations around the world. Even Emmanuel Macron, who frowned on a lot of aspects of President Trump was horrified, and he spoke out about that. Because these leaders know that if these unaccountable oligopolies; Facebook, Twitter, Google, if they have the power to ban, censor, and deplatform a sitting president, that’s way too much power.

Mr. Jekielek:

By the way, I read Laptop from Hell. I had never sat down and read the whole thing through, and I just did so recently. My goodness, the amount of information you have in that book, it’s difficult to ingest the volume. One of the things that happened recently is that Jiang Zemin, the former Chinese dictator passed away. I see all these headlines, like in the New York Times, saying he oversaw the meteoric growth of the Chinese economy. I don’t know if that’s the exact headline, but something along those lines.

My sense of this situation is that he oversaw the compromising, by the Chinese Communist Party, of the global financial system, which means the U.S. financial system. I was reading about the Bohai Harvest affair and CEFC China Energy. These are some of the key tools of the Chinese Communist Party has used to infiltrate the global system. It creates a picture of how this is actually done, and how they do things. That’s what I thought was most interesting, looking at it from that perspective.

Ms. Devine:

Yes, the Biden family is a model for how China plays the long game to infiltrate into the highest reaches of American power elites. Joe Biden was targeted very early on by Zemin, actually, when he was the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He went on a trip to China organized by Zemin at that time, and he met with the Chinese Communist Party top dogs, and they took him to an island, I can’t pronounce the name, but it’s the equivalent of Martha’s Vineyard, in China.

There they plied him with information about how wonderful China was, and how China was a rising democracy, and was embracing freedom and just wanted to become wealthy, and that China was no threat. And of course, Joe Biden swallowed all of that. It’s a great tragedy for America that a man like Joe Biden, who is, I would say, a hollow man without any real values, easily bought, and not too bright, should have been targeted so early on by the Chinese Communist Party and have been such a useful tool to them for his entire career. And now he’s president, of course.

In 1979, when Joe Biden came back to America, he was waxing lyrical about China, and what a wonderful place it was and how it was going to be our friend. One of his most famous lines was, “Nothing to fear here. They’re not going to eat our lunch.” That’s a joke. He was so gushing in his praise for China that he was actually mocked by The Weekly Standard at the time for his extreme gullibility.

And that love affair with China continued for Joe Biden. In 2001, he was an influential senator, still chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, and he was instrumental in allowing China into the World Trade Organization. Most of the negativity was coming from his own party, from the Democrats. This was during Clinton’s presidency, and he managed to overcome that resistance.

And so, that marked the end of the manufacturing middle-class of middle America. Ever since then, Joe Biden has had this delusion that he has somehow has some special insight into China. He was duchessed early on by now President Xi when President Xi was vice president, Barack Obama was president of the U.S. and Joe Biden was his vice president. Biden and Xi met several times. You hear Joe Biden often boasting about the number of hours that he spent with President Xi, who is a chemical engineer. Whatever else you say about Xi, he is an intelligent man.

For him to spend hours and hours talking to Joe Biden—and Joe Biden, we know how he speaks, he talks malarkey, he tells tall tales, he big-notes himself—President Xi has obviously made a study of Joe Biden by spending so much time with him over the years. And for one reason—to explore the weaknesses in America, and to satisfy himself of his own intellectual and moral superiority to America. Therefore, Joe Biden has not been a good representative for America to earn any respect from China, and certainly not from President Xi.

Mr. Jekielek:

Something you mentioned, back in 2001, you said most of the opposition came from the Democratic Party. I think that’s correct. As you’re describing all this, this is very much a bipartisan love affair with the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese Communist Party was an equal opportunity influence peddler.

Ms. Devine:

And still is.

[CLIP] Miranda Devine: The Concerted Cover-Up of Biden Family Scandals—From the Laptop to China

Mr. Jekielek:

And still is. But what you describe in Laptop from Hell, which curiously captures this in some more intricate detail, it’s more the rule than the exception that this kind of activity happens. What do you think? That’s what I think.

Ms. Devine:

Absolutely. Influence peddling is a Washington disease and it’s bipartisan. I do think Joe Biden is a master at it. Because of the laptop and because of Hunter Biden’s former business partners, who I’ve had the opportunity to talk to, and also because of the work of the Republican senators, Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson, and they’re tracing the money trail from China, Russia, Ukraine, and other countries into the bank accounts in America of the Biden family and their various associates, I have a very good picture of exactly how Joe Biden was targeted and influenced by, and used by, the Chinese Communist Party through his family.

Mr. Jekielek:

The coverup of this whole situation has become the big scandal, even as much as what exists on the laptop and what we know from there. What do you think?

Ms. Devine:

Absolutely. The laptop may end up being bigger than the corruption story itself, because it involves the FBI, and because how we learned the laptop itself was buried by the FBI. And then, the FBI, and we only have circumstantial evidence really, and we’ll know more when Elon Musk reveals all, but certainly, it seems as if the FBI colluded with Big Tech to suppress the laptop before the election.

And then, you have the 51 former intelligence officials, these top CIA directors, acting directors, whether or not they colluded with the Biden campaign and Democratic operatives, I don’t know, but they certainly interjected themselves into the election campaign to dishonestly traduce the New York Post reporting and say the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. That was a concerted effort by the security apparatus to crush this story that was damaging to one of the two candidates for president.

It’s really important to remember with this story that people talk about the Hunter Biden laptop, but it’s not about Hunter Biden. He is this 52 year old, I think he says, former drug addict, crack addict, who had a terrible period during most of the laptop’s coverage, of being a raging crackhead, addicted to prostitutes, living this dissolute life, spending vast sums of money and ricocheting around the world, and hanging out with the worst oligarchs and the inner sanctum of the Chinese Communist Party, and the inner sanctum of Vladimir Putin’s court.

It’s just the most bizarre and interesting story, and a tale of great tragedy, because he had his own personal demons. But it’s not about Hunter Biden, it’s about Joe Biden. Joe Biden, he always talks about being the poorest man in Congress, but actually, he lived a very lavish lifestyle. He lives in a beautiful mansion, has always bought and sold houses well above his purported salary, dresses well, his entire family benefited from grace and favor jobs, government sinecures, scholarships, and judge clerkships.

Hunter Biden’s role in that was to be the bagman, to be the guy who would, in his own words, “Give half his salary to his father,” who had to, in his own words, from the laptop, “Support the entire family.” And he became quite resentful of that. So, the coverup is a big story, but also, you can’t lose sight of the fact that this is a story about Joe Biden, and that is why the coverup was so concerted. People who probably would have preferred to remain in the shadows and not have the world know how powerful they were, they decided that the stakes were so high at the 2020 election, that they revealed themselves.

Mr. Jekielek:

The other part that’s very interesting and is exposed by this, the CEFC collapses. Chairman Ye, who heads it, gets rolled up in one of Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign, because Ye was a Jiang Zemin loyalist. Basically, Hunter Biden gets caught up in the internal political struggles of the Chinese Communist Party, probably not realizing what is going on. It was fascinating to see that manifest, and as that whole thing is being rolled up, you have this play-by-play in the book. It’s really interesting to see how that plays out.

Ms. Devine:

Yes. CEFC, as you say, was the capitalist arm of President Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative. During the last two years of Joe Biden’s vice presidency, the Biden family and their various American associates were working for CEFC all around the world, in the Middle East, in Europe, in places like Romania, to help China buy infrastructure, and to buy energy assets. A lot of these countries by then were a bit loathe to allow themselves to be taken over by China, effectively.

And so, what the Biden family name gave them was invaluable. It reassured these countries that they wouldn’t be just swallowed up in debt traps, as China had been doing around the world, that this was the vice president of the United States who was in partnership with this company, so it had to be good. That opened a lot of doors.

Mr. Jekielek:

This is what the family name implied, because Biden himself was not out there making these guarantees, right?

Ms. Devine:

Yes, that’s the interesting thing. The Republicans in the House are now having investigations into this whole affair, and they’ve been at pains to point out that they’re investigating Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s influence peddling scheme. Joe Biden told the American people during the campaign and ever since that he knew nothing about his son Hunter’s overseas business dealings.

But there is just copious evidence on the laptop that he met with at least a dozen of Hunter Biden’s overseas business partners, from China, from Kazakhstan, from Russia, and from Ukraine. He met them in Beijing, and invited them into his vice presidential residence in Washington, DC. He had at least one dinner at Cafe Milano in Georgetown. Hunter organized one in April of 2015, for his father to meet his business partners from Kazakhstan, and Russia, and Ukraine.

The Biden campaign denied that when we published news of that meeting, at least with the Ukrainian, before the election campaign. Since then, the White House has admitted that, yes, Joe Biden did attend that dinner, but they said he only was there briefly, and not for any nefarious purpose. You can’t be a little bit pregnant. He was there.

So, Joe Biden did meet with these people, and therefore, was participating in that demonstration that is important to influence-peddling partners, to the people who are buying influence, that yes, the important person is involved. You’re able to get him to come to a dinner, and you are able to get him on the phone. We’ve never heard from anybody, including Tony Bobulinski, Hunter’s former business partner, that Joe Biden ever specifically addressed any favors that he was going to give to anyone. He always spoke at a “high level.”

Still, he was meeting these people. Still, he was demonstrating his availability. That’s the way the Chinese, and in fact, all influence peddling operations operate. But particularly in China, it was very obvious to Chinese eyes what was going on when Joe Biden, as vice president, flew into Beijing on Air Force Two with his son Hunter Biden in tow.

This was American power come to do private business. Hunter Biden was what Chinese refer to as a princeling. You’re not stupid enough to give the bribe straight to the powerful person, you give it to their family members. That’s what happens in China. And so, that was how the Chinese saw Hunter Biden’s appearance.

To American eyes, there were a few questions about it, but Joe Biden just dismissed those questions. Everyone said, “Well, he’s a good family man. He’s very close to his family. He likes to bring family members along on his overseas trips.” That’s a convenient cover story for the pattern of Hunter Biden’s involvement and access to the powerful people overseas that his father was meeting. It’s a pattern of corruption that’s unmistakable.

Mr. Jekielek:

What do you think Elon Musk’s revelation of the Twitter censorship files, which I keep calling them that in my head, what do you think will come out of that? What do you expect?

Ms. Devine:

What I would like to see is what we can’t get out of Facebook. I’ve asked them, “Exactly what did the FBI tell you to look out for when they warned of a dump of Russian disinformation before the 2020 election?” I have actually asked Facebook a few questions. I said, “Did they mention Joe Biden? Did they mention Hunter Biden? Did they mention a laptop?”

The answer I got back was, “They did not mention Hunter Biden.” That implied to me, well, they mentioned Joe Biden. They didn’t say they didn’t, they mentioned a laptop, that’s the question. I’m hoping Elon Musk will tell us on what date before our story was published, did the FBI go and warn Twitter? And what exactly did they warn them to look out for?

My suspicion is that they were quite specific, because Twitter and Facebook were able to censor our story so quickly, and recognize it as the information that they’d been warned about. I’m interested to know if that information was so specific. It could only have come from their surveillance of Rudy Giuliani.

Mr. Jekielek:

Do you think there’s any possibility that the FBI was had by someone, that they were misdirected about this information?

Ms. Devine:

How so?

Mr. Jekielek:

That someone is coming and saying there’s going to be this Russian disinformation. Someone came to them and showed them information, said, “Yes, there’s going to be this Russian disinformation operation.”

Ms. Devine:

If there was a misdirection, it would’ve been internal to the FBI, because of what FBI whistleblowers have told us, who have also come forward to Senate Republicans and House Republicans and told their stories. What they’ve told us is that internally there was at least one analyst and one agent, who has now left, Timothy Thibault, who was telling other agents not to look at the Bobulinski material and put that information and perhaps other information into a black box where it couldn’t be accessed. They effectively buried it, and told other agents who might have investigated it that it was disinformation. I’m not sure exactly what happened with the laptop, because that was given to the FBI by John Paul Mac Isaac, the laptop repair shop owner, in December of 2019.

He had a really difficult time with the FBI. At first, they wouldn’t accept it. His father was threatened when he went to the FBI telling them about it, saying that his son wanted to pass this information on, was concerned from a national security standpoint, and was concerned about the Ukraine material.

His father felt that he was being threatened when he went to an FBI office. The person he spoke to said, “Well, effectively, your son shouldn’t have this information.” Whereas, his son had the laptop perfectly legally, because Hunter Biden had not paid his $85 bill, and had signed a receipt saying that if he didn’t pick it up in 90 days, it became the property of the laptop shop. So, that was a bit off-putting.

And then, what was really off-putting for John Paul Mac Isaac is that, when two FBI agents finally came to his shop to pick up the laptop and a copy of the hard drive and left behind a subpoena for it, one of them turned and said to him, “In our experience, nothing happens to people who basically keep their mouths shut.”

He wasn’t quite sure whether that was a warning, but he was discomforted by it. When he initially told me about it, I thought, “You’re a little bit paranoid.” And I understand why, there’s a lot of pressure on whistleblowers. In my experience, they do get a bit paranoid quite often. So, I dismissed his concerns.

But now, two years later, as we’ve seen more and more information about the coverup, the internal misdirection from the FBI, the suppression of the laptop and the Bobulinski material, and what the whistleblowers have been telling us about really the politicization of the Washington Field Office, I’m now more inclined to believe John Paul Mac Isaac’s instinct, which was that he was being warned to keep his mouth shut.

Mr. Jekielek:

Are you still in touch with him?

Ms. Devine:

Yes, a lot. In fact, he’s just published a terrific book called American Injustice, and it’s his story of his involvement. He went from being a quietly successful small businessman in a nice part of Delaware, who had a five star reviews on Apple for his computer repair shop, to becoming a pariah in that area. As he said, and as he was told, the Bidens control Delaware. And so, he could no longer work there. He had to flee to Colorado, and shut up his shop. He hasn’t had a shop since then, and he’s been in financial doldrums. So, I do hope his book does well.

Mr. Jekielek:

You’re probably in touch with some of these other characters that are in the Laptop from Hell. Do they believe that this whole situation, especially this coverup, will be exposed? Do they think there will be some justice?

Ms. Devine:

There are varying opinions. If you talk to Tony Bobulinski, who really is a hero, along with John Paul Mac Isaac. He put himself out there before the election to tell the American people what he knew about Joe Biden’s involvement in this scheme. He’s a patriot, he’s a naval veteran, and he was concerned particularly about China and about what he saw as the potential for the President, Joe Biden, being compromised by China. He was very exercised by that. He had everything to lose.

He’s a successful businessman with a young family. He didn’t want to become public. And since then he hasn’t been very public, being as little in the public eye as he can be. But he feels honor bound to make sure that the American people and the congressional investigators have all the information they need to at least expose China’s role in trying to influence the top echelons of American politics.

Others of Hunter’s former business partners are adopting a wait and see attitude. They understand the power of the Bidens. He is president of the United States, and they are probably a little afraid of that. To a man they feel betrayed and let down. Their involvement with Hunter has been nothing but trouble for them.

In one case, Devon Archer was Hunter Biden’s best friend in business. He’s now facing a jail term and an enormous loss of everything that he’s worked for; his houses, and his entire family wealth. He has a $40 million judgment against him. So, he’s on appeal at the moment. But for someone who was told by Hunter Biden that, “You are an honorary Biden, you’re part of the family, we’ll never let you down,” he’s been let down by the Biden family.

Perhaps, not that I’ve been told this, but perhaps he felt that he could be pardoned by Joe Biden, but Hunter Biden refuses to take his calls. He’s just been cast adrift. That’s the way a lot of these people feel, that the Bidens will look after their own, but everyone else who was loyal to them and helped them make money is thrown to the wolves.

Mr. Jekielek:

What are you working on these days?

Ms. Devine:

I must say I’m very interested in the goings on in the FBI, particularly the politicization of the Washington Field Office. Every day there’s a new revelation there. I talk to various whistleblowers including one I can name because he came public, an agent called Steve Friend, who blew the whistle on really nefarious activities and abusive authority within the FBI, and some very questionable case practices when it came to the pursuit of January 6th people.

He felt that this was really untoward, a violation of people’s constitutional rights, and he didn’t want to be involved in it. And so, he raised concerns with his superiors. From then on, he was punished. Now, he’s on suspension without pay and he’s gone public.

He also was able to put me in touch with people and tell me a little about the politicization of the Washington Field Office, which was involved in the suppression of the Hunter Biden material. The Hunter Biden story has brought me into a wider story about the internal, what you have to call, corruption of the FBI politicization. That’s something I’m interested in. I’m also interested in Big Tech, and the power of Big Tech. Elon Musk is a never ending source of interest and news.

Mr. Jekielek:

After all of this, we have CBS admitting two years later, “Yes, we verified it, finally.” I think that’s maybe what the story was. There was that story with the 51 intelligence officials, including five leaders of the intelligence agencies who said it had all the hallmarks or earmarks of Russian disinformation. But the headlines didn’t say that. The headlines were a little more direct. I haven’t seen any retractions yet, have you?

Ms. Devine:

No. It’s just like with the Russia collusion stories that the New York Times and the Washington Post won Pulitzer Prizes for that turned out to be completely bogus, and they never retract or go back. There might be a bit of stealth editing, but they will never admit that they were wrong. There was some excuse before the election for media organizations to be a bit wary if they didn’t have the laptop, and hadn’t had the time that we had had, and the advanced notice of being able to do the due diligence on the material that we were publishing.

But there was no excuse for the New York Times. The New York Times was the first out of the box. Then, they waited 19 months before they wrote a very minor admission that the laptop was real, and that the information was true. And that was buried in the 19th paragraph of a story, which really was just about rehearsing Hunter Biden’s defenses, in this case, in Delaware, where he’s being investigated by the U.S. attorney for alleged offenses, such as money laundering, and tax evasion, and FARA violations.

From what we understand, he has paid back the IRS $2.8 million in back taxes that, by the way, was lent to him by an entertainment attorney he’s become friendly with called Kevin Morris in Los Angeles. But I just feel that it’s too little, too late. And in all of these stories, it’s more like they’re just covering themselves, because they know that at some point, Hunter is either going to be indicted or enter into a plea deal with the U.S. attorney in Delaware. And so, they will have to explain to their readers why they’ve been kept in the dark all this time.

So, they did a limited hangout, just enough information about Hunter Biden’s troubles and his legal issues to say that they’ve covered the story. But there’s always a paragraph buried in each story that’s almost identical across the different media organizations, which absolves Joe Biden. It says, ” There’s no evidence that Joe Biden had anything to do with this.”

And that’s so ridiculous, because there’s so much evidence. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what my book was all about, not about Hunter Biden and his travails. It was about Joe Biden and his influence in the family’s influence peddling scheme around the world when he was vice president, abusing his authority, and putting America’s national security at risk.

Mr. Jekielek:

We have this kind of tribalism or hyper-partisanship in the U.S., to the point where if you’re on the wrong team, even if you’re wrong, you’re still supported. I know we’ve talked about this before, and neither of us feel particularly partisan in what we’re doing, but a lot of people might say we are. What do you make of this whole phenomenon, and how do we deal with it as a country?

Ms. Devine:

It’s a function of a uniparty that has grown up in cozy Washington, and corruption is a big part of that. “You don’t rock the boat, I won’t rock the boat, we’ll all have a cozy little deals, we won’t tell on each other, and it’ll all be fine.” The only losers are the American people. On both sides, you have politicians who enter Congress without much money and leave multimillionaires, whether it be through insider trading, influence peddling, or whatever other little schemes they have going.

The grift is very strong in Washington DC, and that leads to policy blurring between the parties. And into that scene, in 2016, stomped Donald Trump. And he wasn’t part of the swamp. For all his personal flaws, for all his clumsiness and mistakes in office, he really did expose that uniparty corruption, the deep state bureaucracy which operated regardless of which party was in power, and which operated to its own agenda.

And that was not necessarily in America’s best interests, because it’s a globalist agenda. Americans who saw their standard of living and their culture being eroded over the years had become disillusioned with the establishment Republican party. That was why they went for a barbarian, Donald Trump, who was going to go in there and break it all up. That just reflected a real failing on the part of the Republican Party and should have been a wake up call to them.

I’m not sure if it has been, but that’s the polarization. It’s not just a polarization between Democrats and Republicans, it’s between the globalist elites and regular middle class or formerly middle class Americans who feel that their country is being sold out from under them and feel really desperate and angry about it.

The polarization comes from their anger, their mistrust of the institutions and the elites’ condescension, and patronizing attitude towards them. When Hillary Clinton talked about deplorables, she wasn’t just reflecting a Democrat sensibility, she was reflecting the sensibility of the bipartisan bicoastal elites.

Mr. Jekielek:

Best case scenario, in coming years, what would you like to see happen to try to shift this reality?

Ms. Devine:

Two things have to happen. One is that Washington has to clean up the corruption as much as possible. It’s an incredibly corrupt town. I’m shocked at the corruption. I hope that the Republicans are resolute and have integrity and do pursue this investigation of Joe Biden. Because even if it doesn’t result in any criminal charges, and I certainly don’t expect that that would happen, at least it would expose, and let’s hope create some safeguards against this kind of influence peddling operation continuing in Washington, and protecting Americans from the malign influence of our greatest adversary, China.

That’s one thing, cleaning up Washington. Secondly, I would hope that the one benefit of the Trump reign was that it really opened people’s eyes up to the detrimental influence of the bipartisan elite, malign, globalist elite in America.

Trump was the titular leader of the populist nationalist movement, but that existed before him, and it will continue after him. I would hope that there would be a Republican leader who will carry that movement forward, but in a much less polarizing way, in a much clever way, not allowing himself to be taken down and destroyed in the way that Trump naively did. His administration was really crippled from the beginning by the FBI spying on him and intervening and attacking the various people in his orbit.

I’m not choosing anyone who it might be, but I think that there will be younger Republican leaders that come up in that vein who will learn from the lessons of Trump and be able to lead the country and possibly unite the country. Joe Biden’s election was mainly driven by a desire by the great swath of Americans in the middle who just wanted to be unified again, and to have peace and calm and tranquility.

America is a very sociable and good natured country. Joe Biden promised to be a unifying president. Unfortunately, he’s been the opposite. He’s been a very divisive and malignant force, demonizing Republicans, demonizing the opposition by talking about semi-fascists and ultra-MAGA, locking up his political opponents, sicking the DOJ onto parents at school board meetings or any kind of dissenters, politicizing the FBI and the DOJ, and weaponizing social media against his political adversaries.

That has been really destructive. I do believe that Americans have within them the ability to turn back that hatred and polarization and unite around a real statesman or stateswoman, who can perhaps move forward and unify the country.

Mr. Jekielek:

What’s to prevent the megaphone from deciding that the next Republican leader is evil and basically intensifying the polarization that we see today.

Ms. Devine:

You’re spot on, because you can see it already with the demonization of Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who is spoken about as the presumptive heir to Trump. He is much smarter than Trump, though, and he’s learned from Trump. He punches back just as hard, but he also is on top of the details.

From that point of view, he won’t allow the narrative to catch on and catch him out and damage him as much. Also during the Trump era, a lot of people became disillusioned with the media. Trust in the media has plummeted to an all-time low, so there is less influence there, also including social media. I hate to put a lot of faith in Elon Musk. He’s a mere mortal. He’s a billionaire with lots of his own personal foibles and agendas.

Mr. Jekielek:

And exposure to China.

Ms. Devine:

And exposure to China, absolutely, with Tesla. Yes. So, he’s certainly not the Messiah, but at least he’s given us an idea of what freedom of speech in social media can do. It allows the truth to be told. It allows real-time fact-checking of lies and these dishonest narratives that are unfortunately created and propagated by the establishment elite media; the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, and NBC.

It’s disgraceful. And it’s also in conjunction and collusion with the security apparatus. That’s what we saw with the Russia collusion hoax that was seeded by deep state intelligence officials. It’s frightening that the media just gullibly swallowed that without doing any of their own checking.

It was all a lie. The Steele dossier was a lie, and they won Pulitzer surprises for it. The faith in that is plummeting. If the Republicans can get hold of social media and break up its power and somehow prevent one side of politics from being able to control it, then that could be good. But it depends on the Republican Party getting its act together. And I think that’s a very big if at the moment.

Mr. Jekielek:

Miranda Devine, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Ms. Devine:

Thank you, Jan.

Mr. Jekielek:

Thank you all for joining Miranda Devine and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek.

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